The Confederate Escape

The arrival of Fuller's Ohio Brigade and General Nathan Bedford Forrest's charge threw the fighting into confusion, with some Confederate regiments following Forrest east and others running west. Colonel George Dibrell said his men retreated through large cotton fields under fire from reinforcements and from the brigade they had just driven back. As Fuller's infantry charged down the hill, a few surprised Confederate horseholders in Parker's orchard mounted and escaped, while the Ohioans captured the rest. South of Dunham's line, Colonel Alfred Russell's 4th Alabama and Colonel Tom Woodward's Kentucky Battalion fired into Union soldiers, occupying them long enough for Confederates on the west side of the battlefield to escape. Mounted Confederates fled in every direction heading south. The Confederates took most of their artillery and about eighty Union prisoners, while Federal forces captured two guns, all of the ammunition wagons, and several cassons. Confederate reports of losses differed: Dibrell reported four killed, twenty-seven wounded, and 122 of his men and 130 horses captured; Lieutenant John Morton put the number captured at 300, including eighteen men from his battery and Colonel Nicholas Cox's battery; and Forrest reported to General Braxton Bragg that he lost sixty killed or wounded and one hundred captured, a figure presented as a gross and perhaps deliberate underestimate.

Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee · United States